Caught between cultures: case study of an “out of school” ethnic minority student in Hong Kong

Abstract

This paper reports a case study on Maneesha Rai, a Nepalese girl living in Hong Kong and an “out of school” student. Based on in-depth interviews, a case was constructed of her previous school days and current “out of school” days. These provided a vivid picture of her life and several themes were created using schema analysis that help explain the reasons for her “dropping out” of school after Form Five. It has been common to attribute school failure for ethnic minority students in Hong Kong to problems with Chinese language education. Yet Maneesha’s case study shows that her experience of failure in other subjects such as Mathematics and Science contributed to her lack of successful schooling. Maneesha’s school failure was more than simply a consequence of academic failure. Rather, there were many other interrelated factors such as peer and community factors, dropout history in the family, racism, differences in schooling culture found that contributed to her school failure. In addition, Maneesha, like many of her ethnic minority friends, enjoyed the freedom afforded her in Hong Kong, but it seemed such freedom also meant inadequate attention from her teachers.

Keywords:

• ‘Out of school’ students
• ethnic minority education
• dropout
• school failure
• racism
• Hong Kong

Disclosure statement

The views expressed here are those of the authors.

Funding information

The research reported here is drawn from the General Research Fund project, Exploring Cultural Diversity in Chinese Classrooms: Can Assessment Environments Cater for the Needs of Ethnic Minority Students in Hong Kong, [GRF-HKIEd840809] funded by the Hong Kong Research Grants Council.

Notes

1. Designated schools are pre-dominantly catering for ethnic minority students in Hong Kong. While the number of designated schools was 15 in 2006/07, it has reached to 31 in 2012/13 (Education Bureau [EDB], 2012). The EDB in Hong Kong has clearly mentioned the rationale of inviting schools to be designated schools mainly to develop expertise among a pool of schools in dealing with ethnic minority students and sharing their experience with other schools. And perhaps it is easier for the EDB to provide support and resources there. But this designated schools concept has been highly criticized as a discriminatory approach itself mainly because it reinforces segregation rather than integration (EOC, 2011, p. 7; Hong Kong Unison Limited, 2011). However, the EDB is no longer using the term “designated school” on their website and changed it to “schools provided with recurrent funding and school-based professional support for non-Chinese speaking students” (EDB, 2012).